News of the Week

In science news around the world this week, a controversial hydroelectric dam project in Patagonia won a key legal battle, a groundbreaking Swedish life science research initiative will add lab space and nearly triple its ranks, the Large Hadron Collider has resumed taking data, and the Giant Magellan Telescope has decided not to seek financial help from the U.S. government.

A new tool is available to help doctors detect signs of Alzheimer's disease. According to a paper published online this week in Animal Conservation, since 2004, the population of the critically endangered Raso lark has skyrocketed from 65 to 1490. In the April 2012 issue of Sky & Telescope magazine, physicists note that a powerful spring tide may have helped push icebergs into the path of the Titanic. And this week's numbers quantify the percentage of NASA missions being extended and the number of species researchers should inventory over the next 50 years.

To plug a €10 million hole in its science budget while avoiding the closure of domestic research centers, Greece has begun renegotiating its subscriptions to and memberships in international organizations.

Snapshots from the meeting include martian features that behave just like areas of Antarctica that are known to be wet and evidence that the LCROSS lunar impacter most likely struck a particularly wet spot by chance.

A planetary dynamicist suggested that those who believe the early geologic record reflects the solar system's violent birth pangs and those who see evidence of a "late heavy bombardment" might both be partly right.

About The Cover

COVER A series of spheres with two-dimensional patterns generated by computer simulation shows that Turing's reaction-diffusion model may be the basis for skin patterning in animals. A modulation of one parameter value in a reaction-diffusion–based model causes the pattern to change gradually from spots to labyrinths, with the range encompassing the diversity of patterns seen on animal skin. See page 171 and http://scim.ag/comp_bio. Image: Seita Miyazawa, Osaka University